Pharmacy (MPharm) to Medicine - Dave Larkin | PostGradMedic

I found it really helpful being around doctors they were very encouraging when I told them sort of confess to the match that I wanted to be a doctor in the first place and not a pharmacist they were very encouraging for me to go back to medical school hi my name's Dave Larkin I'm a third year medical student at Warwick medical school before I came here I studied at M farm degree at Liverpool John Moores and I worked as a pharmacist for four years before starting once I finished my pharmacy degree in 2010 I did a pre-registration year as all fanswers have to do in a hospital up in Liverpool which was really really good experience getting you straight into hospital and seeing how things work clinically after that I locums for about 18 months so I did a mixture of community pharmacy work and I was lucky enough to be able to actually get a taste of what it's like to work in pharmacy industry I'm sort of doing pharmaceutical aseptic saan on an industrial scale and shipping out aseptic products all over the country that was a really cool job and really go I got the chance to to have a go of that wants that locum contract sort of started winding up there I am I went back to the NHS and I worked in a hospital for about two and a half years ish there's some overlap between these if someone's adding up all that the times like I worked in one and then another one at the same time so I did that for about two and a half years ish as a rotational hospital pharmacist and then when I got accepted to medical school towards the end of that I went back to low coming again but this time in in hospital pharmacy so I was an aseptic chemotherapy locum pharmacist thing a local Children's Hospital for probably about four or five months and then started at Warwick when I finish my MPharm degree I was 23 I think which means that after I've done my pre-registration year which is compulsory part of pharmacist training I was 24 so 24 I was a fully registered pharmacist and out in the world I was 29 I started medical school so I had a few years in-between of working everyone always asked me why I wanted to change career the truth is I suppose I never really wanted to be a pharmacist when I applied for med school the first time you know back in the 1800s when I was 18 I didn't get in my a level grades just they weren't any good the next year I started applying to some other health care related degrees because I died so for one I need to be pragmatic about this and I got an unconditional offer for pharmacy so I took it and I thought this will do as I got into my pre-reg year and I came out that the degree I was really enthusiastic to be a pharmacist when I got into hospital practice and I was working with doctors on a day to day basis I found the longer I stayed there I was just thinking I wish I was doing what you were doing and not side in what I was doing and eventually I just decided I had to go for it I mean I still don't know where the medicine is the right thing for me but no one knows whether it's the right thing to me for them until they've qualified a navikev of it so that's my gamble were you worried leaving a full-time stable career to go back to education I suppose yeah I suppose I did I didn't worry about it a lot I with all the low coming I'd done I knew I had some savings so things were gonna be okay you know it's it's about saving properly and financially and I'm lucky as a pharmacist if I decide tomorrow medicals not for me and Jack it in with a little bit of CPD and an extra admin fee I can be a pharmacist again so I've not left that stable career it's still there just kind of on hold I think the longer you are away the more proof that you've been keeping up-to-date you have to submit along with your your fee but I've been at medical school I've been learning all about drugs and diseases and stuff I'd say I'm pretty up-to-date with things and I can submit plenty of evidence to show they so it's worth thinking about that like when you know if people watching this are worrying about like or do I want to leave a stable career well if you're a pharmacist you can pretty much go back to it and as I mentioned before like some of the students stay registered with the GP HC all the way up until they are until they qualify and register with the GMC and then I imagine they probably drop it do I think it being clinical perhaps from the beginning is is is useful I mean that's one of the big selling points of Warwick isn't it's like as soon as you start you're out there in clinical practice for me as a hospital pharmacist coming in I didn't find it particularly useful from a learning point of view but I think that's probably because whenever I was sort of learning about things in the university I would think back to cases I'd seen on the medical admissions unit as a pharmacist already and I did think that being exposed to patients and and sort of clinical practice from the start was a good thing for Oscars and taking histories and performing examinations which is something well the histories aren't but the examinations were completely new to me that took a lot of getting used to and being there and doing it on actual patients under the supervision of a doctor from day one was really helpful so my favourite part of the Warwick course so far I I think has got to be its part first yeah it's the clinical Anatomy I don't know whether it's because it's something that was so new to me it's something I hadn't touched on as a pharmacist I just found it really interesting and seeing them the plasterer notes and everything preserved really really well on a week in week out basis and sort of getting that teaching there with with essential actual bodies I found that really interesting really engaging it was certainly my favorite part first year even if it wasn't my strongest part first year I did enjoy it so Dave you've actually been through the first two years of the course which has been your favorite year one or year two they they differ an awful lot first year it's almost like you're doing a science degree with a little bit of practical medicine on it it's your preclinical years so you learn all the things the foundation for yours or clinical knowledge we're a second year is the start of your clinical years and you're in hospital every day you're seeing patients are interacting and you're being taught by actual doctors so they are very very different I prefer second year to first year they're both hard they're both tough there's a lot to take in on both of them but I think with my past experience and just my way of learning I get a lot more out of being able to sort of put almost faces to conditions and sort of have a practical real-world basis for the knowledge about diseases and stuff that I'm learning about so that's really helped in second year whereas that's a little bit lacking in the first year what's the single most important lesson you've taken away from your time as a pharmacist that's a horrible question are we I wasn't ready for that one I mean it's really difficult because like actually a lot of the things that I learn are pharmacology things from my degree it's just I suppose as a pharmacist in a hospital you're almost a reference source for the doctors so I needed to know a lot of the management like long term and short term for lots of different conditions I might not understand how you diagnose that condition but I knew what you did after that and that's really that's that's been really handy at medical school and I imagine it'll be really handy when I go forward but that's not really like a one thing I've learnt I could say like the style of learning I had to do at in hospital is quite similar to Warwick because it was very clinically focused and you know coming up with ideas or like you know thinking back to cases that you've done and then applying your sort of academic knowledge to that is very much how Warwick styles things with case based learning with exposure to patients and things to try and make it more real and getting a head start on that wisdom was really useful I suppose the other thing would be and it's really corny but like you know having worked in an environment like that you realized that you can't catch everything and you will make mistakes and actually you'll beat yourself up over it but when you make mistakes it's not at the end of the world and you're only human and that's gonna be really helpful if you had much opportunity to work as a pharmacist during the medical course I I didn't because I came off the pharmacy register in my first year so I haven't worked I know there are a bunch of other pharmacists in my previous year and a couple of them are low coming I'd say in terms of working and and jobs and stuff the first year is not a good time to do it it's a very very intense year there's more scope for it in second year I think that guys did a lot more work in second year and there is locum work around here as a pharmacist if you if you know who to ask what would you say to those pharmacists out there thinking about applying to medicine advice for pharmacists applying for medical school be a hundred percent sure but it's 110 percent George definitely what you want gradual entry medical school is not easy I had a lot of people tell me that an em farm is basically the same level as medical school and you'll be fine if you got through that it's not true medical school is really hard and also you've got to think about financially I know money's not everything but if you're doing a four-year course or even a five-year course if you're applying as a graduate it's it's going to be 50,000 pounds worth of student debt on top of what you've already got from a four-year course plus you've got less scope for earnings you might be able to do a bit alone can work on the side but you're basically all of your out everything's outgoings you've got no money coming in for four or five years and it's a big financial burden but that being said if you are sure like I was that medicine is for you and you've got you've got a try and you've got to be there you definitely pursue it definitely I'm just that old cliche of chase your dreams it really just just do it and have a go and at least you can say even if you're unsuccessful that you've tried and you went for it applying for medical school it's it's really not easy not everyone gets in on their first attempt I mean I I applied multiple times I think if you count up everything from when I first started applying for medical school after designing I wanted to be a doctor at 17 doing my a-levels all the way through all my sort of post-grad applications it was until the 7th time they actually stuck and I was successful with my application to Warwick so it's worth keeping on going and being persistent it can be really demoralizing if you get multiple attempts that end in failure I know you've just got to be sure that you want to do it and if you know deep down that that's what you want to do you'll keep going I found it really helpful being around doctors in in hospital they were very encouraging when I told them sort of confessed of a match that I wanted to be a doctor in the first place and not a pharmacist they're very encouraging for me to go back to medical school and I got some really good references from consultants that I worked with from my med school applications which is great but seeing what they do on a day to day basis it just reminds you every day that that's what you want to do and that's what you should be doing in like you feel like you should be doing and that's what kept me going through years and years of unsuccessful attempts how's your experience working as a pharmacist in hospital changed how you interact with junior doctors well I'm very tempted to go back into hospital as a junior doctor via also everyone because that's basically a lot of my experience of junior doctors but I won't do that I'll be nice I think it has like one of my favourite bits of my job one of the things that kept me going and back in for so long into hospital was being involved in patient care and being asked for advice and opinions by the doctors that I was working with I I happily ask a pharmacist for advice and you know I can bring that sort of like inclusion to them that I so liked when I was a pharmacist I'll be a bonus you shouldn't be afraid of asking pharmacist for advice if you're a junior doctor and I like to think they're good they're great do you feel that your MPharm degree prepared you for the demands of the warwick Rudd entry medicine course mm-hmm it's it's difficult because the only thing that can prepare you for grad entry medicine at Warwick is the grad entry course at Warwick like no one no matter their background whether it's bio med pharmacy like you know social sciences things like that everyone hits first year and just falls down it's so horrible it's there's so much stuff to learn and no matter what you've studied before there's gonna be stuff that's alien to you that you've never come across before and because it's so broad that being said like the MPharm I mean certainly helped me with pharmacology which was great and and sort of being able to interact with patients although I found Anatomy was very difficult that's completely new and alien to me as was weirdly enough torching patients it took a lot to get over the fact that I was going to examine people and that required me to put my hands on them because as a pharmacist you're very much kind of you've walk into a patient's room hi my name's Dave I'm a pharmacist can I ask you some questions and you'd never have any physical contact with anyone so it was really difficult to get over that as a you know as a medical student even though that's an important part of being a doctor physiology is a bit different so my MPharm course certainly we did physiology but we did enough physiology to understand how the drugs work and it was very much limited to that where is medical school you learn all of it because that might be how the drugs work but then this other bit that might be really important for how a disease happens so you need to understand that as well so there was a lot more physiology to take on board pharmacology was fine yeah that it has prepared me in some ways but don't expect to walk on to the course and be like I know everything because I'm a pharmacist because you won't when would be the best time for someone studying a pharmacy degree to apply to medical school yeah it's a difficult one I mean I've only got personal experience of waiting and working for a few years before you go back but their pros and cons to applying at every stage so for example if you were to as soon as you finish your own farm degree you've finished your four years you qualified start medical school and would actually probably be pretty good cuz you're still in the studying mindset you're still used to go in and like smashing up 14-hour days and the library and from finals and that'd be really handy in med schools because you're calm though is you're not registered with the GP HC so if you wanted to do some work you couldn't do it as a pharmacist so you've got to kind of weigh up the financial versus that if you were to do it straight after your pre reg that's probably on balance the best time because it gives you the option of low coming but your sort of study skills and stuff are still relatively fresh and you will have had some experience of learning sort of in a clinical environment whether that be in community or in hospital whichever word those to pre-register you ended up doing and that that's done you really good stead I think or you could do what I did and wait a few years I found it quite a culture shock going back to studying full time from working full time it's been very difficult to get back into the groove of doing revision and sort of reading over notes and stuff but you know I did work for a few years I've got like real world experience it's just been really helpful in case-based learning things throughout the course and I can still locum well I could still no can theoretically if I wanted to and I was able to save a little pot of money before I came to medical school to deal with the the initial outlay fees for first year and have some money for spending and to sort of support myself through the first year of university ever every time to apply as a pharmacist has got its pros and cons I'd say probably sooner after your pre-reg is better but there's no reason you can do immediately before your pre reg or even wait a few years like I did so thanks very much for watching everyone I hope you found my useful I hope you found it interesting if you have any further questions and send Ollie an email or a direct message or whatever and he'll pass them on to me and I'll try and get an answer for you okay and I don't forget to hit that like button I just wanted everyone to know like it's a big switch to leave a career like pharmacy behind although as we've mentioned that's it's still there if you want to but it is it's a big change to go from something like that to going back to studying and going back to medical school but it can be done okay there are plenty of people at Warwick who were pharmacists before and they're now back here studying medicine with us so yeah just don't beep off don't let it put you off and if you want to do it chaser that's a lot with your applications everyone

Channel: Ollie Burton

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Length: 18min 47sec (1127 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 03 2018